LibGuides: MPA Literature Reviews: Finding Articles

What is Peer Review?

Peer review is an editorial process that ensures the information published is reliable. Researchers send their articles to a journal, where the article is then sent out to other experts in the field (their peers) to evaluate. These reviewers will critically evaluate the research, checking citations, data, and content, and recommending revisions where needed.

Peer reviewed articles are scholarly, but not all scholarly articles are peer reviewed.

Additionally, not all articles that appear in a peer reviewed journal are empirical research (see empirical studies tab for more details).

In doubt about whether your article is peer reviewed? You can double check the journal title in Ulrich's.

UlrichsWeb Global Serials Directory This link opens in a new window
Directory of periodicals with information on peer-reviewed status, database availability, publisher, country, ISSN, start year, and active/inactive status.

Business Source Elite This link opens in a new window
Scholarly articles, financial data, SWOT analyses, market research reports, industry reports, company profiles, case studies, and numerous other sources of information in all areas of business.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary search across many databases including business, health and medicine, social sciences, education, science and technology, and arts and humanities.

Here are some tricks using Boolean Terminology. The first two narrow your search, while the last two will expand your results.

Phrase searching is used when you have two or more words you want stuck together in the result. Put quotations around the words you want stuck together.

Examples: "urban planning", "political science", "public administration"

The Boolean term NOT can be used to eliminate a word from your results. Make sure you put this at the end of your search string.

Example: urban development NOT rural

The Boolean term OR can be used to allow the results to choose between two keywords, finding one or the other, but not needing both in a single result. This can be especially helpful with synonyms. Make sure you put the alternative options inside parentheses.

Example: (urban OR city) planning

Truncation can be used to shorten a keyword and allow all possible endings. Truncate using an asterisk, and be sure to cut the trunk where the most relevant branches are possible.

Example: administration becomes administrat*, which then allows the branches of -ion, -ions, -or, -ors.

Putting these together, my search might look like:

("urban planning" OR "city planning") administrat* NOT rural

Never make more than once change at a time! Research is trial and error. Make one change, see what it does, and then make another. Your search should never look like this at the very beginning. It comes only with refinement!